Remembering, And Missing A Mentor

For Some precious moments every day in my almost seven years with the Manila Bulletin, I was able to spend in the office of our Editor-in-Chief Mr. Jun Icban.

- Rocky Nazareno

Tasked with writing the front page captions for the next day’s edition, I would go to his room – located at a far corner of the MB newsroom – and respectfully ask the “maestro” to edit my work.

“Point of inquiry, Boss!” I would holler as I approach his secretary Nida, who would promptly usher me in.

Hunched over stacks of paper, including the dummy pages for the next day’s edition of MB, Tempo and Balita, Mr. Icban would readily oblige with a thumbs-up sign, before going through the captions with sign pen in hand, scribbling an array of editing symbols that only writers of old would actually be familiar with. Fortunately, I am a writer of old.

Be it a mere comma, or a whole sentence or phrase deleted and changed with Mr. Icban’s own magical input of words, I appreciated and learned from those valuable minutes spent with MB’s “guru.”

Mr. Icban was a master of prose, a strict grammarian, who would not entertain any compromise even with a mere punctuation mark. He would underline, underscore, and explain what had to be edited or corrected.

And to think I only had a few sentences to offer up for editing every day.